London Calling (9 page)

“Dad, it’s on twelve October. The match, I mean. Do you have the day off?”

Bill Lane joined us, demanding to know, “Why isn’t Alice watching you? Where is she?”

Jimmy started backing up, so I backed up with him. “I don’t know, Bill. I expect she’s at home.”

“Is Canby around?”

“I don’t know.”

James reached out and grabbed Jimmy by the collar. “You’ll need to be punished for this, Jimmy. It was a bad thing to do.” He hesitated for just a moment, then slapped him across his ears, once left and once right. Jimmy shriveled up like a dying flower. James shook his head. Then he pointed to a spot near the telephone box. “You stand next to me now, and think about what you done wrong.”

Tears filled Jimmy’s eyes. He walked dutifully to the phone box and attempted to stand up straight. I watched him for several agonizing seconds as he struggled not to cry. James took his post next to him, staring straight ahead. He finally looked down at him, so Jimmy whimpered, “I just wanted to see you, you know, to tell you about Spurs and Gunners.”

James’s face softened. “It’s too early to say, Jimmy. I don’t have my work schedule yet.”

They remained in those positions for a few more minutes, but the worst part was over. Bill Lane’s voice filled the silence. “Do what you can to stay out of this bloody war, Jimmy. The more lads who sign up, the less they care about losing them. It’s ‘the more the merrier’ to them. Give Churchill an extra thousand lads and he’ll do another Gallipoli. What does he care? He ain’t wading ashore into the machine guns.

“Here’s a just war, according to Bill Lane: When the royals are running into the machine-gun fire, and sleeping in the mud, and fighting to the death in order to save this bloody empire, then I’ll be fighting with them. I’ll be a few meters behind them, maybe, because I don’t have quite so much to lose as they do. Let them make the sacrifice first. Then ask the poor people to help.”

As I watched, Joseph P. Kennedy emerged from the Embassy with two well-dressed young men. I knew who they were from Father Leonard’s class—the Ambassador’s sons Joe and Jack. The three of them walked into the shade of Grosvenor Square, deep in conversation.

Bill commented, “Look at them three. They’ve already thrown in the towel, haven’t they? Off to a party at Cliveden tonight to celebrate the German victory and the end of the British Empire.”

James clearly shared Bill’s contempt. “They say Joe Kennedy leaves every night for safe lodgings outside London. He stocked his air-raid shelter there with all kinds of cheeses and chocolates.”

“Yeah. He’d bugger off altogether if he could. But he ducked out of one war already, didn’t he? This’d make it two.”

James added, “Do you know what I heard him say, Jimmy? To that General Lowery fella?”

Jimmy was greatly relieved to be included. He finally smiled. “What’s that, Dad?”

“That Hitler and his gang will be at Buckingham Palace in two weeks.”

“Go on!”

“Two weeks. That’s what he said. But let me tell you something else, lad. He made that brilliant statement
three
weeks ago.”

James, Jimmy, and Bill shared a patriotic laugh over that. I took the opportunity to drift closer to the Embassy, because I had a feeling what was coming next. The door opened, and I saw my grandfather and Daisy Traynor emerge. They hurried toward me so quickly that I shrank back, hoping to make myself too small to notice. Both of them reacted to a loud voice from somewhere behind me. I turned and saw the hulking figure of General Lowery standing by the curb.

Ambassador Kennedy reacted, too, because he stopped and called across the square, “Are you hollerin’ again, Hank?”

Lowery turned stiffly. When he saw who was speaking to him, he smiled. “I’m hollerin’ at this girl to slow down, Joe. So I can catch her.”

Joe Kennedy and his sons laughed and walked on.

Martin Mehan escorted Miss Daisy Traynor right up to General Lowery.

Daisy turned back to my grandfather and poked him playfully. “Thanks, Mickey!” She told the General, “Martin Mehan’s initials are MM, just like Mickey Mouse. So that’s what I call him: Mickey Mouse.”

My grandfather smiled faintly. Lowery ignored the comment. He spoke to him harshly. “What’s going on, Mehan? Do you have anything for me or not?”

Martin Mehan answered softly. “Not today, General. Nothing has come in.”

The General looked at Daisy but spoke to my grandfather. “Nothing through her?”

Daisy arched an eyebrow. “Well, gentlemen, why don’t you ask
her
?” She looked from the General to my grandfather. “You act like I have no idea what I’m doing, or who Herr Von Dirksen is.”

Both the General and my grandfather looked around to see who had heard that remark, but neither spotted me. Martin Mehan hissed at her, “Do not use names like that in public, Miss Traynor.”

Daisy’s hand shot up to her mouth. “Oh, forgive me. That was stupid, wasn’t it?”

General Lowery smiled benevolently. “Just don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.”

“You’re lucky I like brunettes.”

Daisy beamed. “Yes, I am so lucky.”

“Answer the question, though. When you dropped off my message, did they give you anything back for me?”

“No, mein Herr,” Daisy purred. “There was nothing to add to all those secret messages that I copy onto lovely scented paper, tie up with pink ribbons, and hide in my hatbox.”

“What?”

“Oh yes. It’s a red hatbox. I keep it hidden under my bed.” She smiled devilishly. “Perhaps you should check under there.”

The General stared at her dumbly. Then he smiled back, slowly, acknowledging the joke. “Uh-huh. Sounds like I’d better.”

Daisy saluted. “Yes, General.”

Lowery turned to my grandfather. “All right, Mehan. Alert me as soon as you get a reply. No matter where I am. That’s all.”

Martin Mehan looked relieved that he could go back inside.

Daisy cooed, “Goodbye, Mickey Mouse. Say hello to Minnie for me.” She laughed gaily and ducked into the car ahead of the General.

I watched Martin Mehan, looking very mouselike, walk into the Embassy. Then I went back to Jimmy’s side. I had no sooner reached him when the shrill whine of another air-raid alarm started. Bill Lane announced immediately, “False alarm. Got to be.”

James turned to us. “I’m not taking any chances. You get home, Jimmy. Get running.”

“Right, Dad. Me and Johnny. We’ll have a race.”

I interrupted. “No. I’m not running through the streets! Not if they’re dropping bombs on us!”

The telephone rang, so Bill Lane crossed over to it. James grabbed Jimmy by the arm. “No playing games now, lad. You get home and stay there. If any planes come, you run to Mrs. Lane’s and get straight into the shelter.”

“All right, Dad. I will. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll be sorrier if you do this again, Jimmy. I mean it.”

Jimmy took off running, but I remained standing where I was.

Bill slammed down the phone. “Bloody hell. Planes
are
coming.”

“How far away?”

Bill gestured contemptuously at the phone. “He didn’t know. The bloody twit.”

That was all I had to hear. I finally spoke up. “Please, sir, Mr. Harker. I want to go to a shelter close by. There has to be one at the Embassy. Right?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Please, Mr. Harker, Mr. Lane. I’m an American. My grandfather works in the Embassy.”

James Harker and Bill Lane both looked right at me, but they didn’t respond.

I backed away in confusion, and rising panic.

Jimmy’s voice called to me from behind the hedge. “They can’t hear you, Johnny.”

“What? Of course they can.”

“No. They can’t see you, either.”

“But . . . they can. They talked to me last time!”

“Not really, mate. They was just playing along with me, pretending they saw you.”

Alarms now whined all around us, rising and falling. I screamed, “Get me someplace safe!”

Jimmy yelled, “All right! Come on!” and took off running.

I leaped over the hedge and caught up with him. “Are we going to a shelter?”

“Shelters stink, don’t they? They got one bucket for a thousand people to do their business in. Not nice. Not nice at all.”

“I don’t care about nice. I’m not running out in the open, with bombs falling on me.”

“Here’s all you got to do if they get close, Johnny: Lie flat on the ground, facedown, with your mouth open and your hands over your ears.”

I couldn’t argue anymore; I could only run. The planes were a lot closer than anyone had thought. I could actually see them in the distance, coming in waves of ten and twelve across, heading right toward us. I ran behind Jimmy as fast as I could, jumping over sandbags and lines of fire hoses that crisscrossed the streets.

The incendiary bombs fell first. I saw one crash onto a roof to our right and burst into flame. Then dozens of incendiaries were falling all around us. They let off choking black clouds of smoke and a strong smell of gasoline. Suddenly my eardrums nearly popped open with the thundering ack-ack noise of cannons. The anti-aircraft guns had roared to life on the streets. As they fired at the planes above, shrapnel from their cannons fell back down, landing dangerously all around us with loud, metallic clangs.

Jimmy bounded ahead of me like a deer. I struggled to keep pace, but I had to yell out, “I need to stop, Jimmy. Please! Where can we stop?”

He skidded to a halt. “One place is as good as another, mate.”

I leaned over and gasped for air amid the deafening noise and smoke. I looked up at what remained of a building across the street. Only its front wall was still standing. Its windows had exploded outward, and now it blazed with a fierce light.

We took off again. By now, a black-smoke canopy covered the entire city, and the sun was dimmed to blood-red from the many fires. The drone of the German planes continued, but the incendiary bombs were now replaced with high explosives. Buildings imploded to my left and right, blowing chunks of concrete and metal right across the road. To my amazement, the defenders of London—the firemen and ambulance drivers and anti-aircraft gunners—still went calmly about their business.

I saw a man lying in the street ahead of me. I watched as two nurses in white rolled him onto a stretcher. But his arm stayed behind him on the street, a bloody stump still wrapped in a gray coat sleeve. I wanted to stop and throw up at the sight, but my legs kept pumping in terror, following Jimmy. He did not stop until we reached the surface shelter across from his house. Again I saw the old woman and the boy standing in the doorway.

Jimmy stopped and talked to them. “Is this it, Gran? Is this the one?”

The woman did not answer. She once again turned and led the little boy into the shelter.

Jimmy told me, “All right. We’ll stop here.”

“Aren’t we almost at your house?”

“Yeah. But this’ll do.”

“Aren’t we going in the shelter?”

“Everything in its time, Johnny. For now, just listen. Listen to me.”

I searched the deadly skies. “All right. Talk, then. Talk!”

“We’re at a point here, Johnny. A crucial point. Your gran—”

“My grandmother again?”

“That’s right. You know what happened to your gran. You know she’s on the other side now.”

“Gran? Nana? She’s dead.”

“Yes. And on the other side. My dad should be there, too, but he needs your help. Will you help him?”

The sound of the bombs got terrifyingly close. Then one exploded right across from us. It hit me fully, like a slap in the face. I fell to the pavement, clutching at my throat, choking on the black smoke and the flying dust.

“Will you help him, Johnny? Will you help?” Jimmy was standing over me and talking, as if nothing had touched him. But his voice turned weirdly flat, and then crackly, and then it blended into the static of the radio. Everything around me—the buildings, the people, the droning airplanes—suddenly disappeared. I was back on my bed, in the basement, all alone and feeling like I was about to die.

I struggled for many minutes to slow down my heartbeat and get control of my breathing. I felt like I was climbing, hand over hand, out of my own grave. Finally, mercifully, my body slowed itself down. I got control of my heart, and my lungs, and I vowed I would never lose control of them again.

I rolled off the bed and fell to the floor next to the Philco 20. I yanked the fraying plug out of the wall. Then I set to work methodically, with my hands trembling, and I removed every glass tube from inside.

Whatever had happened to me, I swore, was never going to happen again.

I was never going back.

MAKING IT THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS

When I unplugged the radio, I figured I had unplugged myself from the world of Jimmy Harker once and for all.

I carried the Philco 20 Deluxe and its tubes to the storage area of the basement. I put the tubes in a small plastic bag and stuffed them inside the back of the radio, like a bag of giblets inside a turkey. I slid the radio into its box, covered it with a white sheet, and stuck it in a dark corner. Walking away, I believed I had left the craziness of time travel behind me forever.

But first I stopped in the computer room. I pulled out my original list of facts and added Pip, Squeak, and Wilfred, Mickey Mouse, and Von Dirksen to it. Then I pulled up my online encyclopedia. I couldn’t find anything for the first item, so I gave it a
Wrong.
To my surprise, I learned that Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, in plenty of time for Daisy Traynor to know about him, so I gave that a
Right.
Von Dirksen got a
Right,
too, a very disturbing one. His name came up as Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s special envoy to London. The list was maddening; it didn’t add up to anything: four
Rights,
three
Wrongs,
and three
Maybes.
I decided that the
Maybes
had won: Maybe I was crazy, maybe I wasn’t. I folded the list up, stuck it in a drawer under the computer, and tried to forget all about it.

Then I plunged headlong into the world of independent study. I generated four five-page papers per week on radio-related topics in science, social studies, math, and language arts. Sometimes, in the course of my research, I found myself back in the era of World War II. This made me a little uncomfortable, but not enough to make me stop. Everything about that time was still fascinating to me.

Mom dutifully transported the research papers to Father Leonard, my faculty adviser, and then she transported them home marked with A-plusses and many favorable comments. She also lugged books from the Lowery Library back and forth for me. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding that we would all continue this way until January. I believe that Father Thomas wanted to keep me at home, away from Hank Lowery, until they had their dedication of the Heroes’ Walk on New Year’s Day.

Psychologically, the fact that I was able to crank out top-notch papers at an amazing rate worked in my favor. It made me look less crazy. But I was no more inclined to leave the basement than I had been in September, so the family remained worried.

One morning in October, I overheard Margaret telling Mom, “There are things we could do, you know. There are social services for people who can’t afford them.”

“We’re not a charity case,” Mom replied. “We’re a prominent family. A family that believes in turning to God, not to some psychiatrist.”

“We’re a family that’s too proud to ask for help.”

“If Martin needs help, we will get it for him. I promise you.”

“Really?” Margaret told her, “Well, guess what? Martin needs help.”

But neither of them said anything to me.

It wasn’t until late November, after I had been in the basement for two and a half months, that Mom finally approached me at breakfast with the awkward question “Martin, do you feel like you need to talk to someone?” She gestured toward Margaret, who seemed surprised at this sudden overture. “I mean, someone other than Margaret and me? Maybe Father Paul at Resurrection?”

“I don’t even know him.”

“Then how about one of the priests at All Souls?”

My look must have told her that that was never going to happen. She tried another tack. “Well, everyone thinks it is a good idea for you to talk about your feelings.”

“Wait a minute. Who is ‘everyone’?”

Mom seemed confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, who exactly is on my mental health advisory team?”

“Just . . . people in the family. People who care about you.”

“Dad?”

Mom frowned. “No. I have not talked to your father about this.” Then a thought occurred to her. “Why? Have you?”

“No.”

“I have spoken to Aunt Elizabeth, though. And she came up with an idea.”

I exchanged a doubtful look with Margaret.

“Aunt Elizabeth thinks you should take the train up to Boston next week. She knows a priest there who is also a psychologist. He specializes in working with teenagers.” Mom looked back at me. “It would all be strictly confidential. You wouldn’t even have to use your real name.”

I told Mom with finality, “I’m not going to do that.”

“What? You won’t even think about it?”

“No. There’s no need to. The truth is, I’m feeling pretty good about things. I think I can finish up this term at home and then go to Garden State.”

Mom explained to me once again, “Martin, you have a destiny in life. All Souls will help you to fulfill that destiny. Garden State is not where you go to become someone important in life, someone like your grandfather.”

I was ready for her. “Mom, I don’t want to become someone like my grandfather. I want to become someone better than that.”

I braced myself for an angry reaction, but it didn’t come. Mom seemed genuinely surprised by my comment, like such a thought had never occurred to her before. She just shrugged and concluded, “All right. I told you about Aunt Elizabeth’s plan and you declined, so that’s that. Honestly, I didn’t think it was such a great idea myself. We’ll just have to see what the new year brings.” Then she got up and left immediately for work.

Margaret just stared at me intensely.

*                           *                           *

To add to the general mess, Dad came home the weekend before Christmas. The plan, as worked out by Mom, was for us all to go to Sunday mass together, then open gifts; then Dad would leave the next day to relieve a restaurant manager in Toronto.

None of us had much to say to Dad through the first steps of that plan except thank you for some gift certificates. Later in the day, however, while I was finishing up my nap, he surprised me by rapping on my door and asking, “Martin? Do you mind if I come in?”

I sat up against the headboard. “No. I don’t mind.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“I’m not now. It’s okay.”

Dad looked around. “This used to be my room, you know.”

“I know. Until that, uh, fire thing.”

“Yeah. I was smoking then. Fell asleep. Stupid, stupid thing.”

“And it was Uncle Bob’s room before that.”

He smiled sadly. “Yeah. You remember that? He stayed down here, too.”

He didn’t say anything else, so I asked, “What’s going on upstairs?”

“Oh. I have a deal worked out with your mom. No drinking until five o’clock. Then I’ll go have a couple of beers.”

“Uh-huh.” I decided to ask him outright, “Do you think you will ever stop?”

“Drinking?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe.”

“When?”

“Do you know what they tell you in Alcoholics Anonymous?”

“What?”

“You can stop once you find a higher power to turn to.”

“A higher power than what?”

“Than yourself. Than the bottle. When you find that higher power, you find the key to stopping.”

I looked at the clock. It was four-thirty. “If you’re serious about stopping, why do you work in a place that sells alcohol?”

I expected him to blow my question off, but he answered it at some length. “I guess I work there because I’ve always worked in that kind of place. It’s easy for me. I can make money doing it. That’s why a lot of people do things—simply because they’ve done them before. They get into ruts and keep chugging along in them.”

Dad started sliding his back down the wall, intending to sit on the floor, so I told him, “You can sit here on the bed. Prop a pillow up against the headboard.”

Dad smiled gratefully. When he was positioned, he said, “What else shall we talk about?”

I answered immediately, “My grandfather.”

“Which one?”

I must have looked confused, because he added, “You have two, you know.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I meant Grandfather Mehan, if you don’t mind.”

“No. I don’t mind. What about him?”

“I want to know what he was really like. I want to get past the family story, you know? Past the official memoirs.”

“Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about when you first met him.”

Dad thought for a moment; then he spoke very articulately, like a professor giving a lecture. “After he retired from the government, and before he became a full-time Catholic layman, your grandfather Mehan took up teaching for a while. I guess he had his reasons. Maybe he wanted to share his great expertise in United States history. Anyway, he called his old friend General Lowery, and, to make a long story short—something your grandfather would never do—he got offered a one-year teaching chair at All Souls Prep. Did you know about that?”

“Kind of. I didn’t know it was a chair. What’s that? Like, furniture?”

He laughed. “No. It’s a position. They have them at colleges. They used to have them at All Souls Prep, too. It’s a teaching position that comes with great benefits, like your own house, and a cook, and a maid.”

“So you get a lot more than a chair.”

“A lot more. So one summer a quarter of a century ago, your grandfather moved into one of the houses that All Souls used to own, right across the street from the front gate. Do you know that big brick one?”

“They owned that house?”

“They owned the whole street, I believe. But they’ve had to sell them all off.”

“Did Nana move in, too?”

“No. She stayed in Brookline to be close to Elizabeth, who was living in a convent at the time. Your mother had just graduated from high school, and they were looking to get her into that nun thing, too. But she wanted no part of that.” Dad formed his index fingers into a cross. “Your mom had come to a crossroads in her life, and she had to make a choice. She took the train down here and stayed with your grandfather in the All Souls house.” Dad cocked one eyebrow at me. “Then, to have some spending money and to have something to do, she took a job as a hostess at a restaurant, the same restaurant where I worked as a bartender. Your grandfather came to see the place one night, and that’s when I first met him.”

“I thought you met Mom and Grandfather Mehan at All Souls. At some religious retreat or something.”

Dad smiled, but not happily. “No. I guess the bar story didn’t fit in too well with the Mehan family history. But that’s how it really happened.”

“You were a bartender?”

“Yes. Part-time. I was in college, too.”

“Princeton?”

“No. The College of New Jersey.”

“Taking what?”

“Education. I wanted to teach history.”

“Really? But you never taught?”

“No. We got married, and Margaret was born a couple of years after that. We needed money, and the path of least resistance was for me to work as a bartender and then as a bar manager. We had to pay for a baby, and we had to keep up with the Mehans, you know. We had to show the Mehans that we could make it on our own.”

Dad’s eyes shifted to the stack of books on my dresser. He changed the subject. “What are all those books about, Martin?”

“I’m doing a paper on radio broadcasts during World War Two. Speeches by Winston Churchill and FDR.”

Dad nodded rapidly. “Churchill was a drunk, you know. He drank all day long. FDR waited until cocktail hour. Like me. But he never had a day without a cocktail hour. And he never stopped after an hour. Yep, they were both drunks.”

“But didn’t everybody drink back then?”

“No. Your grandfather, Martin Mehan, did not.” Dad stared at me pointedly. “But you had another grandfather, you know. He did drink, and I guess that was a bad thing, but he also did some good things in his life. He fought for his country in World War Two. He
really
fought, on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific; he didn’t just push papers in some embassy in London.”

We sat in silence for a minute. Then Dad held up his watch. It was four-forty-five. “Okay,” he announced, “it’s just about cocktail hour. Remember, Martin: It’s always five o’clock somewhere in the world.” He slid off the bed.

I did, too, and followed him to the door. I didn’t want him to walk out with a stupid joke like that, so I asked him one more time, “Do you really want to stop?”

Dad exhaled loudly. “This is not a good time to be asking me that, Martin. I can stop more easily next month, after the holidays. And I will.”

“Because I really want you to stop. I want you to know that. I pray for it.”

“I understand, Martin. I used to do the same thing. I was on my knees every night for many years, praying for one thing: that my father would stop drinking. But it never happened.” Dad opened the door and started up the stairs. “Just think where I’d be today if I had spent that praying time learning a foreign language, or playing the violin, or studying European history.”

“So I should stop praying for you?”

He stopped and shook his head. “No. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that . . . life is complicated. You don’t only have two simple choices: drunk or teetotaler; saint or sinner. It’s more complicated than that.”

He opened the kitchen door and found himself staring right at Mom. She took a glance at the clock and then muttered, “You never could make it through the holidays, could you?”

“Merry Christmas to you, too. Do you want to come join me?”

Mom looked at him with undisguised contempt. “You’re a disgrace.” Then she walked into the living room.

Dad took his coat off a hook by the kitchen door and put it on. He said, “I am not a disgrace, Martin. However, I am someone who understands disgrace.” He looked into the living room. “There’s a difference.” Then he headed out to Pete’s Tavern.

*                           *                           *

I went back downstairs and sat down wearily in the computer room. Manetti had blocked me, too, leaving only Pinak on my buddy list. I saw that he was online, so I checked in.